Being a Clay Pigeon

I guess I don’t see what other people see. What’s so important about working again? If you don’t have any expenses, it’s pointless to actually have a 40 hour/week job, right? People seem to need a purpose—to fill their day with something to do, and to feel needed. That usually means taking meaningless jobs to live off until you get the education you need for the job you actually want. To get that job, you need either experience or a series of little pieces of papers that prove your worth—a high school diploma, a college degree, et. Al.— and you work all the way down the line until you have a comfortable position that you don’t mind working in until you get arthritis and keel over like a rusty sailboat.

But is it worth the effort for the diplomas? You have to pay money to earn the degrees. This means you will have debt for years. And as an employee that sees people’s finances on a daily basis (when I’m not sick), I have to say people make the dumbest decisions even if they’ve been to school for eighteen years. People don’t know how to handle their money. They slide into even more debt, in addition to what they have to pay back in student loans, and then they have to work overtime at their jobs to survive.

So I guess college is important in that way. You are almost guaranteed to work off your debts—credit for your student loans, home loans, credit cards—in the field that you want to. You won’t be working in the grocery store for fifty years, but then again, you don’t really have a choice to stop working at any point. You might even start a family, and then you’re screwed until you’re in your sixties.

The thing is, even when you eventually buy a house, you’ll probably get a thirty year mortgage from a financial institution, like a bank or credit union, you’ll pay over a thousand dollars a month so you’re house isn’t taken away. And then, after you pay for the full thirty years you can still have your house taken away. You never stop paying for a house. You won’t be paying the bank or credit union, you’ll be paying quarterly taxes to your town or city’s escrow slush fund. If you don’t do that, they kick your punk ass into the street.

So, like I said, it would probably be easier to walk through life with little-to-no debt until you you have to settle down and spend the big bucks for a home. Education is important, but even if you go to a state college you are being taught by professors with doctorates. They have the same qualifications, they just believe in the value of an economical public education as much as I believe in being a cheapskate.

Sometimes it’s easier to be a target of ridicule by taking the road less traveled by: the inexpensive path that keeps your options open. You’d be surprised how many people choose a school with a name over a long-term plan with a concept.